


Bad Medicine

by brevityis



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Don't read if you don't want to be very sad, M/M, Major Character Injury, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 18:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brevityis/pseuds/brevityis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the prompt "they're on some planet and bones and jim are captured and the people there test strange drugs on them. First they give them some weird illness and oh god it's horrible and bones is reacting badly because of his high blood pressure and it's really not good and then they test medication on them, two types, but it turns out one of them is fatal...." on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Medicine

**Author's Note:**

> This is your last warning - this is death fic, plain and simple. Not happy death fic, either. The boys don't want to go and they're not reunited at the end. I wrote this after sending out a call for angsty prompts on Tumblr.

“C’mon Bones, c’mon, it’ll be okay, c’mon, just hold on.” Jim’s voice was a litany in his ears, the only soothing thing in this whole hellish scenario. His body _burned_ and he wanted to claw his face off, rip off his skin to get rid of that horrific prickling along every nerve and inside his _brain_. Leonard made a pathetic whimpering noise, and Jim’s hand squeezed his own limp one down to the wrist – the only point of contact their chains would allow.

There had been, Bones recalled dimly, a time when he and Jim had been able to reach each other better than this – they’d been chained at the ankles side-by-side instead of against opposite walls – but that had ended after their escape attempt. They’d been high as kites and shaking in every limb from whatever the bastards had injected them with that time, but they’d almost made it out of the compound. Now, McCoy knew he, at least, wasn’t going anywhere. Hell, he couldn’t even open his eyes, not really.

This round of injections had been worse than the first. Whatever they’d given them, it hadn’t taken long for both of them to be throwing up, sweating, and feeling like death warmed over. McCoy ached for a tricorder, a hypo, anything to combat what had been done to them, but there was simply nothing. All he’d had left to offer Jim was physical contact, and he’d stretched out along the filthy floor to stretch his hand out as close to Jim as he could get.

The relief when they’d linked palms was short-lived. Because not long after that, the fire and pressure inside his veins had started, and before he’d lost all ability to move he’d seen the fear start in Jim’s blue eyes. Not really what a man wanted for his last sight on this earth, he mused whenever the agony ceased for the barest of instances.

“Bones, please, c’mon Bones, don’t leave me, you can’t…” Jim’s voice wasn’t soothing anymore, it sounded panicked, and Leonard exerted himself against what felt like the weight of a starship on his chest in order to squeeze his hand.

The choked sob in the captain’s voice made Bones struggle to open an eye. “Love… love you, Jim…” he rasped to that pale, sweaty face, and there was nothing he could do about it as Jim started sobbing in earnest, railing at the walls and begging their captors to undo whatever it was they’d done, dear god please.

Someone must have been listening, because there were hands at his head and shoulder, rough digits digging into his scalp and twisting his head to the side as something pinched the skin of his neck. The twinge was barely a footnote in the agony pouring over him. Then boots stomped away, and he summoned the will to squeeze Jim’s hand again. Jim squeezed back, and they held to one another for who-knew-how-long, agony measured only by the pounding in his head and his own heartbeat.

Eventually, the pain swamping the doctor receded, and he was able to open his eyes and look at Jim, only to be met with the kid’s own closed eyelids and an ashen face. “Jim?” he asked in a rasp, but silence was his only response. He wasn’t even sure he heard breathing. “Jim!” Leonard tried to drag himself away from the wall and closer to the captain by digging his nails into the grimy floor, as if that would help. The cuff at his ankle brought him up short again, and he growled uselessly. Shifting his grip on Jim’s hand so that his index and middle fingers were pressed to Jim’s pulse-point, he held his breath and tried to get a feel for what was happening to Jim.

There was no pulse. Leonard shook his head and tried again, feeling desperately for _something_. For a moment, he thought he’d found it, before he realized the pulse he was feeling was coming from his own thumb where it pressed against Jim’s hand, not Jim’s wrist. When he pulled that away, there was just nothing. The skin under his fingers was still warm, but everything was ungodly still.

* * *

When Spock burst into the room hours later, Jim’s hand was cold in his but Leonard hadn’t let go. And when he saw the prisoner Spock had taken, the being whose face McCoy remembered from every injection he’d been awake for, the doctor nearly broke his own ankle kicking until that face was barely recognizable anymore. It didn’t even matter that Security took him back up to the ship in restraints, because Jim was going home in a bag.


End file.
